Commercial printing generates 900 billion in annual revenue with 72% of corporations utilizing direct mail campaigns. Pining for a piece of the print industry pie has become increasingly competitive and standing out in the marketplace without sacrificing on price is imperative.
This 45 minute Webinar features industry experts sharing their experience and advice on how to grow your print business.
- Brad Kugler, CEO of DirectMail2.0
- Morgan DiGiorgio, SVP Sales of DirectMail2.0
- Andrew Ettinger, CEO of The Best Postcards
- Joseph Manos, Executive Vice President of Mindfire, Inc.
Transcript:
0:00
okay guys so I’m assuming we’re live I wanted to say hi and um we have Joe to
0:07
replace Dave Dave had a had an emergency he had to tend to so I don’t want to uh
0:14
this is still going to be a great panel and I guarantee everybody will get a lot from it so we’re sorry that Dave
0:21
couldn’t be with us but we will do it again with Dave I love talking today we have a great interaction and uh
0:29
stay tuned for another webinar so again thank you everyone to come for coming today we’ve got a great webinar in store
0:36
I want to introduce the guest we want to get right into content because there’s so much to cover but just some little
0:43
ground rules here is I want this to be interactive I really really want people
0:48
to put their questions in the chat or use the the Q a box and I’ll sort of
0:55
moderate them my job here is just to kind of keep the thing going kind of put questions and answers to or feed them to
1:02
the right most appropriate person or you know maybe it’ll just be a free-for-all and we’re all just going to kind of
1:08
jumble in together but I’ll try to prevent a big mashup so please use the chat please use the Q a and if you do
1:16
not get it responded to or an answer quickly put it in there again because I do want to get to everything and if we
1:22
don’t get to it we will go through this and we will answer you by email afterwards all right
1:28
so please let’s make use of this live event and and speak up whenever you want
1:34
well chat up because we were we’ve got you all on mute so you can’t speak so the first thing I want to do is
1:39
introduce our panelists starting with Morgan digiorgio she is my senior VP
1:45
marketing and sales at Direct Mail 2.0 she’s been with us now what four years
1:50
Morgan she has worked her way up from a lowly sales manager to the Head Revenue
1:56
driver of the organization so she’s got my trust not only because she can sell
2:02
but she is extremely intelligent and she knows how to Market all right there’s so
2:08
much more to just sales and sales but there’s marketing and there’s smarts and
2:13
she’s going to impen import some of those things to you and teach you how to make money all right she’s doing it
2:19
every day here so she’s going to share it with you we have Andrew Ettinger who Andrew I’ve known for I think about four
2:26
years there was a Hiatus for a couple of years years but uh I gotta tell you this guy has always
2:32
impressed me with his blunt and direct communication he is a smart guy who
2:37
knows how to get it done and I’ll give you a little bit of a a better more uh
2:42
written thing here he’s the CEO of best postcards I’m sure you’ve seen him on LinkedIn if you haven’t you must not be
2:49
on LinkedIn he specializes in in-home service businesses and helping them grow
2:55
their brand generate leads and boost sales he serves over 700 clients in the
3:00
HVAC Electrical Plumbing Roofing doors windows and more and as companies growing rapidly and is growing because
3:07
of his unique way of executing Direct Mail which you’re going to hear about today all right and then of course our
3:15
our latecomer here and stand in for Dave is Joe Manos he is the Executive Vice
3:21
President of mine fire he has 25 years of executive management and entrepreneurial experience and he’s
3:27
going to impart his 25 years of experience here in marketing and mail
3:32
and Lead gen for all of you so I won’t read the six paragraphs he’s got he’s
3:38
got a bigger resume than all of us combined so you’ll have to take it on my word here so the first thing we’re going
3:46
to do is Morgan’s going to give a little presentation specifically on tips on how to grow your business that’s what you
3:52
signed up for and that’s what you’re here for so we want to deliver that which will provoke which will hopefully
3:58
invoke some more questions and they’ll go oh my Siri is talking to me
4:06
okay I’ll turn her off anyways after that I have about 15 questions that you
4:12
guys submitted that I will either interject during this if it’s appropriate or we will take them up at
4:19
the end and deliver them to the appropriate expert who’s on this panel um I did forget to introduce myself I’m
4:25
Brad Kugler the CEO and co-founder of direct mail 2.0 um
4:30
I I buck stops with me that’s all I’m gonna say so
4:36
flap any longer I’m turning over to Morgan over to you thanks Brian I’m I’m super excited about
4:42
our webinar today and I thank everybody for joining us I know that there’s a lot of ways that you can choose to spend
4:47
your time so I thank you for spending with us um we’ve got a jam-packed webinar we are going to go over just some high level
4:53
content regarding tips to grow your print business now we did send an outflow and for our our most recent
5:00
registrants we were asking what is your biggest challenge in growing your print business so we will go over just some
5:06
high level content but from there um we’re going to segue into a q a with our panelists where we can address all
5:13
of those specific questions that everybody is looking for some expert opinion on um so excited to get started today you
5:19
know I do have um quite a bit of experience in business where I was positioned in several leadership roles I’m a co-founder of a
5:26
technology-based medical company and for the last four years as Brad alluded to I have had the pleasure to work with
5:32
commercial printers all over the United States where I have been able to assist them with their sales and marketing plans so I tend to get a lot of insight
5:39
into what’s going on within these organizations and we work with small mom and pop printers all the way up to some
5:44
of the largest printers in the country um and what I can say is that for the most part I I know the challenges that
5:51
we’re all facing in the industry right now and I think that we are busier than we’ve ever been
5:56
um we’re running as lean as we’ve ever ran and we have probably some of the greatest challenges that we’ve had you
6:02
know some historical things are kind of repeating themselves just in different facets but it’s really hard sometimes
6:08
and I think that we get blinders on and we don’t take an opportunity to really look at the intricacies of our
6:14
organization and actually run an analysis because if we want to grow our business the first thing we have to do
6:20
from a very ground level is take an inventory you know we need to know what our strengths are we need to know what
6:26
our weaknesses are what is working what is not working for us uh you know a business that doesn’t take an inventory
6:32
eventually will go broke and if we are just spinning our wheels and we have no insight into what our strengths are what
6:40
our weaknesses are and we’re not making changes then we’re not going to be able to grow right so that’s the first thing
6:46
you know having a good indication of what our opportunities are right so once
6:52
we know a little bit more about our organization and we know what insatiable Goods we should be getting rid of and
6:59
what our strengths are and what should we should really be focusing on and accelerating so that we can compound
7:05
um we’ll have a better idea of what opportunities lie out there for our organization and what is a really good
7:10
fit for us these are what we’re going to want to be contributing the most resources to but what’s very important
7:16
as well is to know what our threats are I mean I think that we’re all very aware of the current challenges in the
7:23
industry the rising cost postage increase paper shortages labor shortages but what I really want you to pay
7:29
special attention to is your competition you should know everything that there possibly is to
7:36
know about your competition you should know what their products are their services what their talent looks like what their unique selling propositions
7:43
are how are they marketing themselves and you need to ensure that you were doing at least bare minimum what they
7:48
are doing and then once you know what they’re doing you need to look and see what it is that you can do better and
7:53
that’s where we need to talk and focus about a unique selling proposition you know a lot of the questions that came in
8:00
through the chat are how can I differentiate myself right how how can I set myself apart from ABC printer down
8:08
the street right I’m sick of trying to Market and sell my company or grow my
8:14
company based on price right that is a losing battle so what we need to do is
8:19
we need to add more value and understanding what your unique selling proposition is is going to help you to
8:27
communicate that value and that message should look different for prospects and customers you know what what is my
8:34
unique selling proposition what is it that I’m trying to communicate to my audience so that I can grow my business well it looks a little bit different for
8:41
prospects and customers for prospects why should they listen to you why should
8:47
they do business with you instead of somebody else you know a big question that people are asking about which the
8:53
panelists are going to drill into a little bit further is why should I do something instead of nothing right why
8:59
should I use Direct Mail as a marketing channel or direct mail is too expensive right so communicating the value of
9:05
direct mail or print or promotional products or whatever your services or products are that you’re offering
9:11
is very important right these are what your unique selling propositions are that you’re communicating to your
9:16
prospects and for your customers you know what do they love about you why do they keep coming back why do they keep
9:23
doing business with you and not looking into who your competitors are customer retention is very important and it’s a
9:30
lot easier to generate additional revenue from existing customers than it is to go out and find a new customer so
9:36
making sure that we’re taking care of our customers and recommunicating what our unique selling proposition is to
9:41
them is also very valuable in being able to harness opportunities with them and growing your current business there
9:49
so here’s a few examples of some unique selling propositions okay
9:55
faster service more personal service okay when I was talking before you know
10:00
in the first slide about taking an inventory um you know when when I think about taking an inventory I’m also talking
10:06
about your talent or I don’t know maybe your non-talent that you might have in an organization you know if you’re
10:12
paying a sales rep eight eight or an order taker 80 grand a year to just sit back and take orders and not actually
10:19
going out and they’re not generating new business for your organization and they’re not properly servicing your
10:25
customers well that might be an insatiable good that might be something that you need to discard from your
10:30
organization and find a better option for you somebody that’s actually going
10:35
to be generating revenue for your business um guaranteed on time completion
10:41
you know is there something that only your organization includes in their
10:47
products and services is there something that customers or prospects can have exclusivity with with you and I think
10:54
that Andrew has a pretty good message about that that he’s going to talk uh a little bit further that um I think is
11:00
going to add a lot of value here to this webinar he shares and his experience as well um you know but some services that maybe
11:07
will go above and beyond the basics as well like Direct Mail 2.0 you know here at our organization we have
11:14
marketing automation platform that layers on different Technologies on top of direct mail so that we can help
11:21
commercial printers and marketing and ad agencies all over the country improve the trackability of the mail right so
11:28
not just the deliverability of but the actual response to the mail why layering
11:34
on an omni-channel marketing campaign to improve the response to the mail ah now
11:39
this is something that you’re doing above and beyond just putting print to paper right you know I had a partner the
11:45
other day that called me absolutely ecstatic because he was prospecting for a new Direct Mail business he engaged a
11:52
prospect he started talking to them about their direct mail marketing strategy engaging in a consultative
11:57
selling approach they’re already working with a different printer and he started talking to them about Direct Mail 2.0
12:05
you know does your current print provider do this the answer was no and
12:10
he was able to successfully secure a 750 000 piece mailing of which now he has
12:16
been making that mailing monthly so hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional print business just because
12:22
he engaged in consultative selling and he has something that he’s providing above and beyond just putting into paper
12:28
now you know not just a product like Direct Mail 2.0 but I think even just providing a consultative selling
12:35
approach and actually showing a customer that you care about the results that they’re getting from their direct mail
12:41
campaign is also a unique selling proposition you know I can pick up the phone and I can take a print proof and I
12:47
can say no problem I’ll go ahead and print that for you but if the creative is trash and I know that it’s going to
12:53
perform terribly am I really doing my customer or our organization any value by just generating the sale and running
13:00
the money absolutely not because when it doesn’t perform well they’re not going to come back to me for a reorder even if
13:06
they’re the ones that provided the creative I’m going to get the blame Direct Mail doesn’t work and they’re
13:11
going to put their budget into digital right so there’s a lot of ways that we
13:16
can add additional value and generate a unique selling proposition now
13:22
here that I want to talk about is making Investments oh gosh right now costs are
13:28
higher than they’ve ever been my cash flow is the lowest that it’s ever been and you want to talk about me making
13:34
Investments right well unfortunately sometimes we have to uh you know spend
13:39
money to make money and there’s things that we absolutely cannot afford to not invest in especially if you want to grow
13:46
your business so first thing is marketing right you absolutely positively have to be marketing your
13:54
business your unique selling proposition what your strengths are you should be marketing not only to prospects but also
14:01
your existing customers you know there should be some type of loyalty marketing where you’re continuously engaging even
14:07
your existing customers to be capturing additional revenue streams and also ensuring that they’re not out there
14:13
seeking what other competition is doing right so very important to keep building that relationship not only with your
14:20
existing customers through marketing but also also through the acquisition of prospects you know your brand your
14:28
presence how you’re marketing yourself is so important because you’re not just
14:33
selling postcards you’re not just selling direct mail and promotional products you are selling marketing you
14:40
are selling leads to your customers where they have an expectation that you
14:45
are going to drive Revenue into their organization if they are paying close attention to
14:51
your marketing which I can assure you that they will be and the first thing that they are going to look at is your
14:57
website so it is so important that your website is doing a stellar job at
15:04
communicating the value of your organization and putting your best foot forward in what that first impression
15:09
looks like and showing how well you guys are actually marketing yourselves right because if you are doing a terrible job
15:16
and marketing yourselves a customer or Prospect isn’t going to really have the confidence that you’re going to do a
15:22
good job marketing for them so your marketing strategy yes you should definitely be investing in marketing but
15:28
let’s make sure that we’re doing a very good job um you know
15:34
we’ve had a few different Financial challenges I would say just recently in the last few years
15:40
um the first one was covid brutal okay brutal you know things really slowed down because guess what happens people
15:47
get super fearful okay and the first thing that they want to do is they want to pull into their purse strings and
15:53
they want to cut marketing that’s the first thing that they want to do right that is a code red that is the absolute
16:00
last thing that you want to do is cut your marketing especially in an economic
16:06
downturn or recession anything right because in all reality you should be
16:11
marketing 10 times harder and also there’s a lot of opportunity there right so Andrew kind of brought this uh you
16:19
know Twitter post here to our attention uh before we we came on to the webinar
16:25
um you know and I couldn’t agree more you know Andrew do you want to maybe expound on this uh Twitter post a little
16:30
bit further you know but to the same extent of this Twitter post I read an article about
16:36
four years ago um when starting the best postcards uh and
16:43
it was from Harvard Business and it said like this is the time when everybody is pulling back and when you have to attack
16:49
this is when New Market leaders are met made this is when you should be spending your money and investing like we’re
16:57
telling our clients to invest in your brand invest in your personality let people know who you are
17:03
um this is not the time to hide this is the time to empower your employees um this is the time to for the consumer
17:11
Journey for for it’s just this is so right on that if you really want to make
17:19
a difference this is the time to step up because the world is meeting nobody halfway
17:24
sure yeah one thousand percent I mean listen if the majority of people are you
17:29
know going into that that fear-based thinking and and they’re pulling back on their marketing think about the opportunity that that opens up for you
17:36
right I mean people aren’t going to stop existing and and people are going to still need products Services Commerce is
17:44
still going to go on and this is a great opportunity for you to go out and actually educate your print customers on
17:51
the fact that they need to keep marketing right because this is also giving you an opportunity to give them these opportunities by educating them on
17:58
what’s effective let me interject and give a very basic example that that was actually in this tweet and I’ll I’ll
18:05
transition it to printing if you go to your mailbox and you see six or eight
18:10
pieces of mail that are marketing mail and we go through a recessionary time and 20 or 30 percent of them cut their
18:17
mail so now there’s only four pieces of mail in your mailbox now let’s say you’re the guy who keeps mailing all
18:24
right your piece is now only competing with two or three others versus last month or last year it was competing
18:32
with six or eight other pieces for so for the same amount of money you are controlling a greater percentage of the
18:39
eyeballs of what’s in that mailbox so to stop marketing and go the effect and and
18:45
reduce your budgets it is crazy you’re actually getting a discount you’re getting more air time
18:52
for the same money so I’m sure Andrew would agree with that this is the time
18:58
to Market not the time to pull back this is the time to do direct mail I mean
19:04
people don’t get it it’s 80 of the leads that we get we send to the internet like
19:10
I know you were hitting on that value proposition before um it’s it’s so true it’s like I don’t I
19:18
don’t take a one-time order I don’t sit on my ass and wait for people to call and be an order taker I don’t take
19:24
artwork um everything in with us is is inclusive
19:29
we don’t take sales in the first call we ask them for their last two years customer list we plot them out on 3D
19:36
heat Maps we show them where the clients are coming from we append data to it we
19:42
show them how many times they’ve seen each client by the time you’ve added that value
19:47
added and you’ve separated Yourself by the time I’m done with that call which is a week later
19:54
they’re already sold before I even make a proposition I never talk about price and price is one of my best things
20:01
because I only deal with people who run in perpetuity and when you accept less and you don’t
20:08
educate and you don’t ask the right questions you don’t ask people about their business you don’t ask them what
20:13
their revenue is you don’t ask them what their percentage of sales against Revenue you sit in your ass and wait for
20:18
people to call into you that’s you know I get on my ass every day I write articles I post on LinkedIn I post
20:26
on Facebook I don’t pay for anything I just open my big mouth and I tell people
20:32
how it is it’s top down leadership so Andrew let me show you an example of
20:37
real world direct mail I live in a pretty nice area 13 villages
20:43
here’s the only realtor in my area that’s using postcards personalized QR
20:50
code just listed oh guess what this one just sold
20:55
same realtor and this one just came back on the market at a steal for nine hundred
21:01
thousand dollars I talked to her the other day she’s the only realer of 13 that market in our area there’s probably
21:07
more but the 13 prominent ones she’s the only one that’s using this approach Direct Mail personalized QR code and
21:14
pearl she’s getting one to two new sales a month from this strategy you know find
21:19
out how much your home’s worth uh you know 800 to 900 000 out what is
21:24
that two million a month from the only person using Direct Mail of 12 13 Realtors and you know what the great
21:31
thing about that is Joe I just read an article today that 38 of Realtors cannot pay their rent in October exactly
21:38
because they do it the same way over and over again exactly right so she’s making
21:44
an investment in marketing where she’s seen Roi right there’s so much competition in real estate why am I
21:50
going to work with one realtor or the other well she’s establishing a relationship with her audience through direct mail and she’s getting it excuse
21:58
me in Russia but she’s more interesting both from existing customers she’s already sold a home to as well as new
22:05
customer acquisition she’s getting the Holy Grail both yep I I wanna I wanna keep us on track here
22:12
and and where my moderator hat so that we’re not all over the map here I want to Circle back to Unique selling
22:19
proposition I think before you Market your goods and services I I believe
22:25
utterly in the importance of a unique selling proposition and I think it’s important that we give the listeners
22:31
some better idea on this so they can either develop their own or or fine-tune their own
22:37
Andrew what is the unique selling proposition for best postcards
22:43
you know what everybody’s empowered we have no filters
22:48
we tell people the honest truth we don’t push the sale we mail 250 million pieces
22:54
a year um so we’re not desperate for the sale um we include graphics on everything as
23:01
many changes as you want there are no upsells there’s the data and analytics that we provide afterwards we know
23:09
um direct meals always suffered to get attribution because we’re sending people
23:15
to a website nobody’s typing in the name of the URL we’re branding people unfortunately we don’t get to send mail
23:20
out and have people buy our products we get to send mail out so when they want
23:25
to buy their products they think of us and they go to Google and they type in our names and it comes up as a pay-per-lead so we do match back reports
23:33
we match back every piece of mail when the person signed up how much revenue they generated how much mail they put
23:40
out what type of mail they put out and we do that every three months we also do a b testing and none of this we charge
23:45
for this is all inclusive we’re gonna we’re gonna look at the mail that you the the areas that email to
23:51
and go against areas that you didn’t mail to we’re going to compare them the only difference is they’re all getting
23:57
the same advertising except a is getting mail so if you spend fifty thousand dollars in a over the course of six
24:03
months if I tell you that a produced 500 000 more dollars in Revenue than b you’re a happy camper I don’t aim to
24:10
prove attribution I need to prove net lift and that’s what you have to be showing your clients because nobody else
24:16
is being transparent good all right that’s a valid USP Morgan
24:21
what is our unique selling proposition sure I mean our unique selling
24:26
proposition is that we have the opportunity to layer on uh you know
24:31
anywhere from an 8 to a 13 layer technology platform onto direct mail so
24:37
that we can seamlessly track the mail and lift the response around 23 to 46 percent for just a few pennies per mail
24:43
piece right but you got to know that Morgan right people have to know that they have to know that when they add
24:48
layers to your direct mail when there’s multiple touch points that’s what makes it work and it doesn’t matter which part
24:55
of it worked it just matters that it works you know it’s making people understand that nobody knows what the
25:02
selling point is nobody knows what that Tipping Point is that made someone make the purchase sure you know that’s true
25:08
and you know we we have a really unique technology called lead match that there’s actually a pixel that can go on
25:15
a website so that when somebody from the mailing list responds like they will respond to any other marketing channel
25:20
like you said Andrew by going online you know without some kind of way to identify that someone’s standing in
25:27
their living room with a mail piece and going online a lot of times you’re not you’re losing that attribution to the
25:32
mail you know you’re not showing it that there was a campaign that I like to highlight where there was about 4 800
25:38
pieces mailed they received 17 calls which is rather lackluster unless maybe the sales cycle is 200 Grand a pop but
25:45
it wasn’t so 17 calls rather lackluster however with the pixel we were able to
25:50
show that 932 people from the mailing list went to the site which is an 18
25:55
response rate to the man right which without technology like that people are saying God you know I got 17 calls I
26:03
don’t know if I want to mail again you know I I think in the Kool-Aid for the agency
26:08
right right right exactly and so we have to we have to be vocal enough to let
26:15
people know what’s really going on you know let me get Joe’s response to the same thing guys yeah I want to Joe tell
26:21
me about mine fires unique selling proposition just so we can demonstrate this to the to the people on the
26:28
audience yeah so simply stated um we connect digital to print and again we
26:36
tailored design the connection points whether it’s web whether it’s email ringless voice messaging SMS yeah the
26:44
Myriad of channels 13 or more uh those are table designed to what the end State
26:51
objective of the customer is you know if it’s lead acquisition new customer acquisition versus customer base you
26:58
know their database we’ll go ahead and do a deep dive and understand what they’re trying to achieve and then we’ll
27:03
give them the ideal programmatic approach to achieve that objective and obey by the way the one thing that’s
27:09
really important in today’s discussion one one and done programs are not going
27:15
to get the job done in today’s world correct we’re all believers in that getting 3 000 Impressions a day of
27:22
information like the old speaker uh commercial on TV a guy’s hair is blown back from all the
27:29
information the volume uh you need to have the right ongoing nurturing
27:35
conversations with your target audience and that’s and and serving up content as
27:40
part of that journey of Education I’ll tell you we we started that many years ago and it is one of the major reasons
27:48
that just about everybody knows about mindfire and those that want to be our customer are a customer so it’s all
27:54
about the right channel the right time and the high value engagement yeah fantastic all right so then I’m
28:02
going to start we’ve got a bunch of questions here we’ve got some coming in in the chat I I I’ve I’m sort of trying
28:08
to manage the the process here to keep it relevant we’re not jumping all over the place the first question I’m going
28:14
to give to our panelists here is from Jeff Bach how do I differentiate myself
28:20
from my competitors all right Morgan I’ll let you kick that one up first sure
28:26
I mean we’ve already spoke about a few ways here on the webinar that you can differentiate yourself but you know just
28:32
expound a little further you need to find out what your unique selling proposition is you know whether that’s
28:37
you know a consultative sales approach whether that’s a product like mine Fair
28:43
fire or a product like Direct Mail 2.0 but we need to be doing something above
28:48
and beyond just picking up the phone and taking a print or promotional product order and running that through you know
28:55
we have to be adding more value for our customers okay I’ve got another one here this is
29:02
the the marketing stuff is a lot of questions I’ve got I’ve got Steve gadu
29:07
and June Valenzuela that have almost the same thing give me some effective ways to go about obtaining new customers what
29:16
are the best methods and this is from Steve for customer new customer acquisition Drew you want to give your
29:22
input and we’ll we’ll circle around because there’s no one single way to do this so I mean obviously networking
29:30
um getting involved with groups and and sponsoring events I don’t really do the huge shows but I do the boutique shows
29:38
um where we’re uh major sponsors and people have to talk to us because it’s only eight people in the room
29:44
um also I I’m very vocal on social media I try and become an authority in the
29:50
field where people can ask me questions or I can just spit off whatever I want
29:55
to rant on on the given day but everything that I say makes people think more about the services that we
30:02
offer I never talk about direct mail I only talk about marketing you know build yourself up as an authority and people
30:08
will come and the other thing I do is um to the effect I’m spending money we
30:14
spend a half a million dollars a year on taking Bibles to certain industries and paying them to get poly bags and putting
30:21
an eight and a half by eleven in front of the cover so and we do it every single month and it’s exactly what we’re
30:28
telling our clients to do you need to mail every single month you need to build a brand for yourself because
30:34
nothing’s going to work one time a hundred percent and and Joe do you have a response to that how are you guys
30:40
acquiring customers what’s your so I would support everything everyone just said but my coaching tip of the day
30:47
would be educate for free many years ago when I first joined mine fire almost 18
30:53
years ago the first thing we did is we created a monthly Coaches Corner and I
30:58
would send out a ton of invites to customers prospects associations and we
31:05
would just pick a couple topics and get some guest speakers like Andrew and other customers and friends and we would
31:12
just start educating for free our emails that would go out on a weekly basis we’d say hey are you facing this challenge
31:19
finding new customers visit our personalized site download our getting
31:24
to first base in five easy steps the more you educate guess what you start to
31:30
find people pay attention before you know it they’re reaching out to you and saying hey Andrew
31:36
could you help me I really like what you’re you’re sharing for free could you help us maybe and Andrew says yeah let’s
31:42
set up an appointment have a conversation business men and women are smart people if you show them the way
31:48
more times than not they’ll go to your doorstep knock on your door and say can you help me
31:53
correct I love it at Morgan how do you acquire new customers I mean we have a
31:58
lot of success obviously with our webinars you know we put a lot of attention on our marketing you know we
32:04
use direct mail I mean we practice what we preach we use direct mail for our marketing we use the power of repetition
32:11
it’s never just a one and done so we typically have multiple drops on our direct mail and we use our platform to
32:17
layer an omnichannel platform where we we’re repeating that exact same message that goes out in the mail but I also
32:24
think that there should be a lot of emphasis placed on the utilization of a
32:29
sales team you know one of the things that I wanted to touch on a little bit further about something that’s important
32:35
to invest in is Talent OR sales team I was speaking with one of my partners the other day was telling me about how his
32:41
revenue is so down and he was telling me this whole sob story you know he basically has this you know relationship
32:48
with this one customer where he generates the majority of his business and I said man you need to say sales rep
32:53
you need somebody out there that’s pounding the pavement that’s picking up the phone that’s Dialing for Dollars
32:58
that’s trying to generate revenue for your organization and he tells me oh I can’t afford it it’s like you can’t
33:05
afford not to I mean you pay a sales rep what you know 35 45 000 a year base and
33:11
then you put them on a commission so that they’re thirsty and they’re they’re willing to go out there and they’re incentivized and make money so what
33:18
750 bucks a week that you’re paying somebody I mean in my organization I want to see about five to eight times
33:25
their income driven into our organization I mean it’s an investment that makes a lot of sense to me because
33:31
we cannot do everything on our own and we need to invest in talent and and the
33:36
right people that are going to help grow our organization uh thank you Morgan that’s a perfect
33:41
segue to kind of move away from the marketing at this point um before I jump into marketing I do
33:48
want to answer Randy Beck had and same with um Terry Clark just had a they had
33:55
a similar question is and and Randy’s question was how do you increase how do you get
34:02
people to reply to the calls and the emails all right um I I’m gonna take this with with some
34:08
of my own experience of 30 years in business um I still believe that if you can see and
34:16
talk to someone the personal relationship is the best a zoom even
34:22
is better than a phone call okay a phone call is better sales than an email but
34:28
the problem is is we’ve gotten disconnected and people don’t answer emails and they very unusually answer
34:35
their phone unless they’re calling you so the response part of it is difficult
34:41
you have to give them a reason to respond and uh this leads into Carrie’s
34:47
question about Live Events and networking I feel that you know
34:53
obviously it’s more expensive but if you can do a live event and and I’d call a zoom like this a live event in all
34:59
honesty you’re going to become more real to those people and they’re going to feel a connection hopefully and drive
35:07
that relationship forward so I wanted to I wanted to give you that response and
35:12
and kind of hold moving on and I want to move on to this sort there’s lots of questions about Staffing and people this
35:19
seems to be a recurring issue in today’s economy um here here’s one from Thomas Thomas
35:27
asks hey with an aging Workforce I think this is more associated with print how do you recruit young Talent into
35:34
this industry all right um Andrew I’m going to defer that to you
35:40
you’re younger than me and you’re in the print industry so what do you have to say for that
35:46
um I’m I mean if you have a good organization you have a good culture and
35:52
you know like our company set up with profit sharing all our sales people make the same amount of money but at the end
35:59
of the year they get profit sharing they we have 401k matches we we pay their
36:04
insurance um yeah you know I know I’m going back in something that you just skipped over
36:10
that you said you know how to get people to answer our calls but we don’t make outbound calls we’ve
36:15
created a brand where people call us you know and we get 100 leads a month that we’re
36:22
able to find that about 70 of them are qualified people who want to do a campaign for six months or more and are
36:29
invested and like you mentioned before Morgan we offer exclusivity in those areas and we’ve created that system so
36:37
if you create the culture people will come and people’s friends will know about it
36:43
um it’s just if you’re looking for somebody to go out in these day and age just make phone
36:48
calls and just do emails nobody’s going to succeed you know there has to be that
36:53
something extra that you’re doing you know um I just
37:00
I’m I’m I’m such a big proponent of you being your brand
37:05
excuse me I have my Bratton on me Karen please I’m on the webinar no no problem I’ll I’ll defer to Joe at this point now
37:11
Joe you you’ve been in the business game for a couple decades um yep what is what is your stance on
37:17
how to attract and keep uh good employees yeah I think it’s all about passion uh you know when you’re
37:24
passionate about your organization you know other people want to be associated with that passion you know what’s going
37:30
on so that’s number one always be talking to your employees to friends
37:36
Associates get introduced to young people share the vision the story uh
37:41
print can be damn sexy if you know what you’re doing so so let me ask you that’s that’s exactly I think what a lot of our
37:47
audience is having an issue with I’ve got a big old 25 year old web press and and maybe I bought a variable data
37:54
printer and am I going to go to the local ice cream shop and everybody and I’m going to say I can print your buyers
38:00
for you does that sound like something that a millennial wants to do getting out of college how do you make that sexy
38:06
yeah you draw people to that yeah so you start talking about the daily you start talking about all the different ways
38:12
that we connect through Communication in today’s world which print is communication and so then we start
38:17
talking about the New Age the new opportunities to to start to build the
38:23
momentum that we’re trying to seek with a younger generation in our organization you know and I might go to a local
38:28
school I might like I said introduce some of my team members
38:33
uh young college age uh students into the organization and paint a picture of
38:40
where they can go because again print done well is damn fun but if you’re just gonna
38:47
sound you know sell traditional print in the same way oh we got the best quality
38:52
the fastest delivery the fastest turnaround the lowest price no young kids going to want to be a part of that
38:58
and believe it or not in today’s world there’s still printers that sell that way and so you need to paint the picture
39:04
of oh by the way we’re going to connect the dots you have to get this printing to your customer you have to meet their
39:10
very needs and like I said print can be damn sexy if you know how to present it properly 10 99 of people have to touch
39:18
it feel it look at it before they throw it out send them that’s a
39:24
billboard in someone’s home you know how do you not get over that you’re getting
39:29
a hundred and fifty thousand emails a day and you’re then you get this postcard that is a 40 higher recall
39:35
Factor 75 of Millennials prefer to get direct mail than any other thing it’s
39:41
white noise out there we should be jumping all over this right now
39:47
people aren’t yeah and Brad you know one of the fun things I do with Marketing
39:53
Executives all the time um and this is how you make pre print sexy but you know I’ve got the marketing
39:59
exam says oh yeah we’re spending and again we do this as well as part of our platform we’re spending ten thousand a
40:05
month on digital ads and I got a million impressions this month I go Whoa man
40:10
that’s amazing and then I go but let me ask you how many of those Impressions actually purchase your service this
40:17
month and they go I don’t know that’s a big disconnect and then I go you know what if you start doing some of the things
40:23
that we’re going to work with you on I’m going to be able to show you exactly how many conversions you got from the direct
40:29
mail piece now which do you want they want the conversions every time so again
40:34
it’s on how you approach the challenge or the opportunity but I will tell you
40:41
data is damn sexy right now and being able to show the data conversion from
40:47
those million impressions you started the month with sure I think these are great points I
40:53
also want to draw anybody that’s on the webinar who has not looked in the chat there’s people injecting some great
40:59
points some even better than we’re talking about here so please look at Alex Saunders makes a great time Joanna
41:06
Gore makes a great Point set print can be sexy there’s a lot of technology that
41:11
can be done to print to make it stand out and guys like Andrew know how to do
41:17
that so uh print is not a boring you know 60 year old white guys game there
41:24
is new stuff going on with new technology and it is not yesterday’s news it is not going extinct if anything
41:31
it’s returning with these new technologies and you as a printer or an
41:37
employer or an HR Manager has to impart that into the recruits all right so so
41:43
please do not settle into the age-old think that print is dead print is a
41:49
bunch of old dummies that are waiting to retire that is not true okay it is
41:55
transitioning to a new generation so all right let’s move on this is also related to that oh Morgan I just wanted to say
42:02
something you know a couple things you know when we’re talking about how do we get somebody to respond or email or phone call well you know I think that
42:09
like Andrew was talking about it’s a little bit about attraction you know first of all who the hell are you you
42:15
know an email shows up in my inbox I get maybe 40 or 50 of them a week about hey can we schedule a call I have absolutely
42:22
no idea who you are what you do I’m a busy executive I don’t have time to read a book you know so if you’re doing a
42:28
good job of marketing yourself and and getting you know creating a brand and a presence for yourself in the industry
42:34
I’m already going to have my antenna up when I receive an email from you about oh you know maybe this was something that I wanted to look a little bit
42:40
further into but your messaging needs to be on point two don’t send me a book I’m not going to read it I’m going to delete
42:46
delete whatever it is like you need to give my attention somehow if better be valuable you better tell me what that
42:53
value is and why I’m going to take the time you know to read that email or or answer that phone call or continue the
42:59
conversation and you know we have to do a very good job at doing the same thing for our organization to be attracting
43:06
the new Talent you know have you been you know signed yourself up for awards to see if you can get awarded for best
43:12
place to work you know pay close attention to company culture offer good work life balance invest in automation
43:19
so you can streamline processes and make your employees jobs easier so that they’re not completely served you know I
43:26
mean there’s just there’s just a lot there that we can be doing to be making our organization more attractive to be
43:33
attracting you know these younger generation potential employees and you know I’ve been reading a lot recently
43:39
lately also about some of these print organizations implementing apprenticeship programs you know because
43:46
I think it’s a little easier to attract sales reps or people that might be more in interested in marketing but you know
43:52
I know my partners need people that are going to run the process you know and people that that they need Staffing in
43:58
that regard so look into some of those apprenticeship programs that some of these print organizations are starting
44:03
to implement as well great great answers and and I’m going to go right into the next question from
44:09
Matt Custer and I’m going to give this to Andrew because this is a more of an operational thing and I know that
44:15
everybody gets beaten down into the minutia of and here’s the question how
44:21
do I get the work done that I need to get done on tighter budgets and less staff you know everybody’s pressured
44:27
with staff and budgets how do you deliver a good product under those pressures Andrew you want to communicate
44:33
on that I mean is that from a company standpoint yes you as a as a print a a print
44:41
marketing company owner you get asked I’m sure by your customers that you’re ex they expect the world and if you’re
44:48
short staffed or or you know what happens when your margins are squeezed how what do you do I mean
44:54
to me raise prices I don’t know I mean what do you do I mean 80 of your business comes from 20 of your clients
44:59
get rid of the bad clients you know what I’m saying people want to really say that you know and I know I I have
45:05
diarrhea the math and I go up on tangents but Morgan makes such great points anybody who’s not using LinkedIn
45:11
is missing the entire ball you want to send an email to somebody take a client
45:16
that you already have get friends with them on on LinkedIn see who their Mutual connections are write an email
45:22
personalized to that person and in in the subject box Steve Smith like I work
45:28
with Steve Smith this is what he does he does great for me you know these are the services that we offer I’d love to help
45:35
you it’s an inferred referral like forget about this this this cold emails
45:42
that are they don’t even know what you do or they don’t know what business you’re in or they don’t know what your company’s about write five emails a day
45:50
that are personal eyes like that and I guarantee you at the end of the week you love 10 leads
45:55
I I couldn’t agree more honestly the the point you made about the 80 20 rule 80
46:01
of your customers I’m sorry 20 of your customers 80 of your business everybody has a pain in the butt customer who
46:10
basically brings in a small fraction of the revenue but takes up a disproportionate
46:17
amount of employee and production time and materials and resources and and I’m not saying that we need to
46:24
become buttholes and rude but you know what when let them go somewhere else
46:30
introduce them to your competition yeah the introduction call sets up the tone of the whole relationship and right find
46:38
that somebody’s gonna be a douchebag or you find that somebody’s going to be a wise ass or he’s going to ask you every
46:43
month or or question you every month this didn’t work this didn’t work this didn’t work that’s not your client that’s not your client you need somebody
46:50
who believes in your process and then signs up and goes a long term those
46:56
those guys are gonna that it’s also eighty percent of people think up your time you know what I’m saying it’s it’s
47:03
just work with people who are dedicated to the process and there is enough
47:09
business out there I I’ve I’ve I’m guilty of this myself it’s you have a fear of firing a customer because of the
47:18
scarcity how am I going to replace it I’ll tell you what you fire that customer and I’m not talking about a big
47:24
dramatic you know fireworks and brimstone I’m just saying listen I think that you’d be better served by
47:31
someone else I cannot obviously accommodate your needs and then that additional time and resource and
47:37
negative energy that has left your business you will find a better customer you’ll have more time to do it you will
47:43
not be as upset and you will find that other customer so and again I’m not
47:49
advocating for us to go and burn down our customer base but you move on to the ones that are profitable that are not
47:56
causing you an over expenditure of resources anyone else want to expound on that I
48:03
love that Andrew brings these things up they’re a little bit controversial and then I feel comfortable with expounding
48:10
on it so thank you again Andrew for and I’m sorry for the language I just I believe it’s not having a filter and
48:16
coming from the right place and being transparent listen you speak the truth and and it’s needed you know so thank
48:23
you all right so to that point yeah go ahead I can since you know managing our
48:30
customers a big part of what I do with my team um I think as long as you have open honest communication with your customers
48:38
yes no harm no foul if they’re treating you poorly well then shame on us as a
48:43
company for allowing that to happen you know you just have to say time out uh uh we don’t talk to you like you are coming
48:50
doesn’t talk to you like that we don’t set these crazy expectations we need to work as partners and then if the
48:56
relationship’s not working any longer then you say you know what just be honest say hey it’s obvious you’re not
49:02
seeing the value and the love from us so you’d be better served to find another partner that can help you we shouldn’t
49:09
that shouldn’t be our end game we should always have the right processes in place that allow us to manage difficult
49:14
customers successfully but sometimes it’s just impossible just be honest open with them set their expectations and it
49:22
goes both ways they have to get you the job you own enough time to complete it successfully and they got to get us the
49:29
assets so we can do these wonderful marketing programs for them in the three or four weeks we told them it’s going to
49:34
take to get it built out not in one week so it’s just be open and honest 100 and I want to obvious you guys have
49:41
all heard of a company called Microsoft and many years ago um when Bill Gates was still running it
49:48
and and uh Jim Ballmer or I forget his first Steve Ballmer I’m sorry they
49:53
implemented a a annual cut of the bottom 10 of their employees okay and I I know
50:00
I’ve shifted back to employees but the same thing goes for customers if you are constantly removing the low hanging
50:07
fruit or the the biggest underperformers it’s it’s a yeah it’s a benefit to the
50:13
organization and it’s a benefit to the customer base all right there is you’re leveling up every time this stress level
50:20
in the organization the confusion and Chaos melts away when you do that kind
50:26
of thing so it’s another tactic that’s been written about in MBA programs and
50:31
and business books this is not a radical thing but eliminating the bottom 10 of
50:36
your customers and the bottom 10 of your employees is almost a religious experience in some companies and don’t
50:43
be afraid to do that all right um I’m going to move on to Christina
50:48
Babylon has a question from strategic Factory how do I educate customers on the
50:54
importance of print as it relates to their branding and marketing I’m going to let I’m going to let Morgan take off
51:00
with this one and I think I think the viewpoints of each person will be helpful here we’re down to the final 10 minutes so let’s try to keep it brief
51:07
sure I mean you know this is where we’re utilizing a consultative selling approach but I think that it all first
51:13
starts with our marketing you know there’s so many so much information out there right now that is showing that we
51:19
are achieving higher than ever response rates to the direct mail marketing channel you know it’s out there we just
51:25
need to harness it and recommunicate that to our customers and educate them on what is working right now
51:32
um you know like Andrew’s talked about having those conversations when we have a prospect and talking about what their
51:37
goals are and what are they trying to accomplish and showing them how we can use Direct Mail as the vehicle to help
51:43
them accomplish that you know it’s all about our marketing and sales strategy
51:49
good Andrew would you like to comment on how do I educate my customers on the importance of print as it relates to
51:55
marketing this is this is your religion man so I mean if anybody can see anything with me I
52:02
might have a loud mouth but the passion you know um it’s look at what pay-per-click you’re
52:10
buying your leads it’s social media if you were tied to Facebook or Twitter right now where would you be you know
52:16
you’re buying your leads like if nobody wanted the business to rely on somebody else’s algorithm or proprietary method
52:23
or 10 million 600 000 direct uh direct response or you know digital people it’s
52:31
it’s just a great time to plant the seeds and stop
52:37
taking the shortcut because Direct Mail is planting the seeds now for Roi today
52:43
and results tomorrow we haven’t been canceled by the low culture you know if
52:49
anything a lot of the other social media platforms have been
52:56
um that’s not to say that layers aren’t the most important thing in the world I am the biggest proponent of layers and I
53:02
think people should be trusting people like Brad and Direct Mail 2.0 with with putting layers on it because I don’t do
53:08
that but I suggest to them that they go get their layers you know because
53:13
once again I don’t know who’s going to drive that final sale to you but people need the brand they can’t just buy that
53:20
good and I’m going to alter that question to Morgan next I have Jay scheisel uh forgive me if I butchered
53:27
your name but his question is very similar if your customers prospects and
53:32
Community only view you as a printer what are your thoughts on how to change their mindset to see you more as a
53:38
marketer in bringing a complete solution sure I mean this is where you need to
53:44
position yourself as a trusted advisor to your customers are you going above
53:50
and beyond just asking them you know what Paper Stock they want and how many pieces they want to mail and you know
53:55
what price per piece you can get them this is really where we need to be asking them okay Mr customer what is it
54:01
you’re trying to accomplish what are your Revenue goals you know this is the response rate that I’m getting to direct mail if I do three drops I can increase
54:08
your response to the direct mail another one percent you know these are the results we’re getting from our Omni
54:13
Channel Direct Mail campaigns I can show you the attribution I can show you who’s responding we can put them into a
54:19
marketing funnel and continue to hit them until they convert you know talking about something above and beyond just the printed paper and I’m going to go
54:26
back to it and and go back and and hone in on your website because if I go to
54:32
your website and all I see is this little one page and it looks like a kindergartener put it together and it
54:38
doesn’t talk anything about you know Marketing Solutions or how you’re adding value and it’s just talking about you
54:45
know a few little things about print then nobody is going to look to you like a trusted advisor for Marketing
54:51
Solutions you are going to have to start positioning yourself in that regard presenting yourself in that regard
54:57
putting on webinars getting on LinkedIn and creating your brand as a marketing
55:02
solution service provider you have to create that thank you that I mean that’s that’s
55:08
words of wisdom and I love it and there’s a similar question and it and I’m gonna let Joe and Andrew so when
55:16
when there’s just a general lack of demand for printing at all how do you
55:21
have that conversation that interests someone and actually printing versus doing digital or something else Joe why
55:28
don’t you start and I want to hear Andrew’s answer right after that yeah so I always start with the end of
55:34
mind uh you know all the conversations I’m sitting side by side with printer sales reps in front of their biggest
55:39
brand customers and uh you know I just simply asked him hey what’s the number
55:44
one challenge you’re trying to solve for today uh what’s killing you guys or gals and they’ll tell you and then uh if we
55:51
can help them we work backwards and uh we show them solution because at the end of the day it’s showing the proof cases
55:58
of how you’re going to transform the results they’re achieving or solve for the problem let me give an example one
56:03
of the big questions in this webinar with supply chain challenges and one of uh my former customers is now
56:10
back with us killing it um he sat through a QR code webinar with me he had a challenge he couldn’t get 15
56:17
million window envelopes after learning about Innovative Direct
56:22
Mail Solutions he went back to the customer redesigned the solution for his customer rather than using window using
56:29
an example like that he got his largest single sale in his 30-year career by
56:35
designing a better solution for his customer to achieve their key objectives I could go on and on for the next 30
56:41
minutes about how we did that but his largest single sale print sale in 30 years because he took a problem
56:49
and he gave him a better mousetrap for moving forward long term over 15 million Direct Mail pieces as a result of that
56:56
solution so for all today if there’s a million ways to help you grow fantastic
57:02
and Andrew why print why should people print if you’re sitting in front of a guy and he’s like I do digital I do
57:09
social why do I need to print because you differentiate yourself from everybody else who’s not doing it own
57:16
the mailbox own the home if there is no lack of demand it’s getting in front of people and being
57:23
able to talk about your product show evaluated and have passion about it
57:28
sure I couldn’t agree more I couldn’t agree more all right so so we’re in the last two minutes of this I want to give each
57:35
of you three uh about 30 seconds or so to kind of wind down and and preach all
57:43
right well we’ll start with you anything you want to tell anybody on well you know I I just have kind of like you know
57:50
one last comment I want to make and and I know that I like that Joe brought up the supply chain issues so unfortunately
57:57
the challenges with paper are very real right but I think with every problem there’s a solution I’ve had a lot of
58:04
resources reach out to me of which I’ve passed along to some of our print providers but unfortunately sometimes it
58:09
seems that they’re a little bit closed-minded when it comes to utilizing some of these resources even when they
58:15
have references from different partners of mine that have used them and it’s like gosh I need paper I need paper but
58:22
you know the procurement manager just doesn’t want to use a resource that they’re not comfortable with and the
58:27
other thing too is that you know we had a partner recently that came back to us that one of their customers was actually
58:33
telling them that they don’t want to use Direct Mail as a marketing channel at all or maybe they can’t fulfill some of
58:40
their print orders because they don’t have the paper and we do have opportunities that Direct Mail 2.0 where
58:45
we can run a digital only campaign to the list then with our lead match pixel
58:50
actually identify who the website visitors are to build you one of the most viable mailing lists that there are
58:57
like there are no better people to Market to than people that are literally on the website raising their hand and telling you hey I’m interested and this
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is how he was able to now create a mailing list and get the customer to start mailing again so you know there
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are solutions out there we just need to be a little bit more open-minded hi Joe you thank you thank you Morgan we
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call that direct mail retargeting by the way in case it needs a name Joe what what are your parting words to the
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audience here in terms of how to grow their business or or expand
59:27
yeah first of all uh you have to have great uh sell promotion marketing for
59:33
your company uh if you need help and ideas on where to begin reach out to me I do it 24 7 with our customers and many
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of them are growing second you need to be an innovator uh with your customers always bringing new innovative ideas to
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help them achieve their top challenges you’ll be amazed how much revenue results from that third uh most of the
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printers on this call need to do some introspection and look at their sales organization because in today’s day and
1:00:01
age with all the solutions there’s absolutely no reason that every printer in America should be growing their
1:00:07
companies year over year so if you want some help and guidance on that reach out to me I’ve been building successful
1:00:12
companies for 40 years and I’ve got a few ideas no charge I give it away free
1:00:17
because smart people come back and want to do business with mine fire fantastic Drew how can everybody be as successful
1:00:25
as you in the print business Direct Mail is hot you know I and if you
1:00:32
don’t believe in it nobody else is going to believe in it uh my people are seeing results and 95 of our clients run off
1:00:39
contract in perpetuity and they’re not doing it because I’m handsome you know um so
1:00:45
just be real and look at yourself in the mirror and know that it’s top down
1:00:51
leadership and think outside the box and you know this this isn’t an audience for
1:00:57
me where I’m selling my services if anybody wants help
1:01:02
we need more voices in the industry we need more people getting on and speaking and talking I don’t need to be the only
1:01:08
person who’s talking about Direct Mail we’re talking about marketing you know get yourself out there do what you’re
1:01:14
not comfortable with that’s what I did I was the worst speaker in the world but now I do videos all the time and it is
1:01:23
so far out of my comfort zone but it’s made such a difference right these are fantastic points guys
1:01:29
and and it really is a mindset and a passion print is not dead you know what’s dead email is dead you checked
1:01:36
out the stock price of Facebook lately there there’s a uh I don’t know there’s a business that needs a turnaround so do
1:01:43
not think that your print business is dead okay you have to get to work with a
1:01:48
passion and an idea that you have a product that people want and it will be
1:01:54
effective it will work so that being said I we got about seven or eight questions we did not get to I like to
1:02:00
keep this on time I will put these together in a document and circulate it to our experts on the panel here and we
1:02:07
will send it out with the recording on this within a few days but thank you very much it was a pleasure we will do a
1:02:14
follow-up and if you still have questions you have the emails here on the slide email us your questions we
1:02:19
want to help we want to give back all right guys thank you thank you very much thanks for giving us the opportunity
1:02:26
bye-bye
